A wonderful browse-able blogsite for current events in geology, astronomy, and biology… and a free online revision of an exceptional almost-too-difficult-and-technical science book covering the geological, astronomical, and biological roots of life on earth.
https://earth-pages.co.uk/author/sdrury777/
This is a link to Stephen Drury’s frequent blogs on cool recent news in geology, astronomy, and biology. Here’s some representative headlines.
– Signs of life in some of the oldest rocks [Sept 4]
– Lucy: the australopithecine who fell to Earth? [Sept 4] – forensic evidence that Lucy the famous australopithecine died by falling out of a tree
– The nearest Earth-like planet [Aug 28] – Proxima Centauri, the Sun’s closest companion star (4.2 light years distant), for godssake
– China’s legendary great flood did happen [Aug 24]
– Oceans of magma, Moon formation and Earth’s ‘Year Zero’ [Aug 12]
Often the discussion gets Really Technical. But the feature is always described simply and dramatically enough to thrill the eight-year-old science geek in me.
https://earthstep.wordpress.com/
And… a free online revision of a great scientific treatment of the search for understanding the birth of life on earth, through current events in geology, astronomy, and biology, by Stephen Drury, Stepping Stones: the Making of our Home World [1999].
https://earthstep.wordpress.com/contents/
– List/links to chapters
I’ve been rereading the revised Stepping Stones for the last two months, a chapter at a time. It’s really slow going for me, with difficult chemistry and math for a lazy layman decades out of my last biology class. But the questions are delicious, and the events and theories are dramatic and fascinating.
As a taste, I recommend the beginning of chapter 10, which talks about how the vast energies of comet and asteroid strikes produce huge geological and atmospheric changes in seconds, instead of the millions and hundreds of millions years required by normal geological processes.
https://earthstep.wordpress.com/2016/06/07/chapter-10-graveyard-for-asteroids-and-comets/
[Wouldn’t you LOVE to own a car that had been struck by a meteorite?]
In a Too Long follow-up post, I’ll discuss how Drury’s book on the evolution of life has sparked reflections on the evolution of the printed book, and my evolution from print reader to digital reader. Which should be of less interest to you. But interests me a lot.